My independence is a self-diagnosed mental illness that is the root of my ego. I cannot begin to list the variability of how necessary others are to my existence. Sometimes I still need a mother or a father. Sometimes I still need you, but do not spoil me with anything but my freedom and your love. I would like to be spoiled, but in spoiling me you must tell me to scream in rebellion at you. Spoil me with freedom to pursue what you may think silly. Spoil me with a lack of a leash to let me continue imagining my independence. But please do not let my imagined independence be contagious. Understand that I am no more independent from you than my cells are from mitochondria, all of which you have given to me. The breath in my lungs that allows my yells to echo in the canyons and the lungs that hold it belong to you, and there is gratefulness to you that I fear is ineffable. But the thoughts in my head belong to me and I cannot apologize for this, but I can say that I will give you my feelings of unconditional love, those are yours. You gave me those at birth and I will return them like borrowed sweaters. My emotions, my strife, my capability to learn and grow and reach the tops of literal and hypothetical mountains: I owe these things to you. The farther my distance from your doorstep and more people I have seen give themselves, I have never seen one give as much as you without expectation for reward. There is a world established and grown purely from the lines on your fingertips. Each thought in your head that you trivialized was responsible for the creation of millions of lives to come. Even if your saliva tastes bitter from years of ******* on the pits of the regrets you have swallowed, do not forget that you have grown flowers in your stomach from nothing but stomach acid. You are capable of everything. You are ineffable, I do not fear this. To describe my mother would be to see the eye of the storm wink at my destructive worries. To describe my mother would be to describe the universe taking the shape of bird whose clipped wings could not stop its flight. Impossible. I have a bone to pick with language, it cannot capture the most important things…But, Mother, I will not pick your bones. Your lips may be chapped and your eyes may be tired, but your legs are still capable of dancing. Let the rhythm move your aching bones and grow happier as you grow older. It should not be any other way.